With the advent of portable digital media players of small form factor, there is a challenge in limiting the hardware button set to a useful and usable set. Typically, media players solve this problem by eliminating all but “the important” controls and providing a subset of the controls found on larger audio/video (A/V) equipment consoles and digital media center remotes. For digital video and television (TV) scenarios, individual buttons have been separately, but collectively, provided for each of the following functions: Jump “n seconds” forward (or skip forward), Jump “n seconds” backward (or skip backward), Scan forward and Scan backward.
For illustrative purposes, an exemplary prior art media playback user interface is shown in FIG. 1. A play/pause button PP toggles between rendering a designated selection of media and pausing the rendering of the selection. When the selection of media is being rendered, pressing the fast forward button FF causes the media to be rendered faster, allowing a user to move through the selection at a faster pace while still observing some characteristics of the selection to know when to stop fast forwarding the selection. Typically, pressing the fast forward button FF again causes the movie to return to the play speed, or causes the fast forward process to toggle through different speeds. Selecting the play/pause button PP also generally returns the rendering of the media to play speed. Similar to the fast forward button FF, there is a fast rewind, or fast reverse, button FR, except that the media is rendered backward instead of forward.
The prior art user interface also includes a skip forward button SF and a skip backward button SB. The skip forward button SF either causes the next media selection in a set to be played or causes the rendering of the media to skip forward a predetermined distance, which may either be to a predetermined location (like the next chapter in a DVD rendering process) or may be to a predetermined time ahead (like 120 seconds ahead of a present location). The skip backward button SB works similarly, but once again, operates to cause the rendering of the media to skip backward a predetermined amount, as predetermined by location or time.
However, as noted, for smaller form factors, such as MP3 players, portable movie players and the like, there is a need to reduce the associated hardware set of buttons to a more efficient set in view of hardware real estate restrictions. Additionally, a small device with a multitude of buttons is intimidating from a user standpoint, regardless of real estate restrictions. Even if not intimidating, it would be desirable to reduce the cost of a device by providing a more efficient set of user interface controls. Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide an improved user interface for rendering media that addresses the problems presented by the state of the art.